But not for the reasons you think.

Say what you will about the nature of Call of Duty, and how the gameplay never changes, relying on the same mechanics year-in and year-out. However, given the series’ increasing eSports presence – not to mention the millions of gamers who appreciate the unchanging style of play – Infinity Ward executive producer for Call of Duty: Ghosts Mark Rubin stated that changing its core mechanics couldn’t be altered too much.

Speaking to OXM, Rubin stated, “There is the obvious truth that if this were football, and next year they decided we only want seven players a side and you can use your hands, I don’t think people would want to go to many of those games. So we can’t change too many of the core rules, and the core rules are really simple. You’re a player, it’s in first-person, you have a weapon in your hand and you run around shooting other people.

“We can play a lot with the outside of how that works, and it’s things like character customisation, making the movement through that world better, making the world itself more interesting, adding the new modes, adding the new dynamic maps.

“So there’s still I think a lot to do. Anytime we ship a game – and this is a non-Call of Duty statement, this is [applicable to] any dev you’ve ever talked to – is there’s always a ton of features they wish they could have gotten to, before they shipped. So I think we’ll always be able to bring new and interesting stuff. It’s literally that we’re just trying to make a better game than we made last time.

“Giving people new content, new ways to play, Squads is a really new way to play that I think people are going to find really interesting, because it’s different to anything we’ve ever tried to do in Call of Duty… I think we’re going to continue that trend.”

Will these new aspects, despite the same base, bring about greater success for the franchise when Call of Duty: Ghosts releases? We’ll find out when it releases on November 5th worldwide for current-gen consoles.